Interview: Kevin Smith on Man of Steel, beards, and the future of comics

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Of the many discussions that have come from the trailers for the upcoming Man of Steel, shaving company Gillette latched onto the pair of scenes where Clark Kent goes from having a full beard to being the perfectly clean-shaven Superman we all remember. Between the minds of Kevin Smith, Miyam Bialik (of Big Bang Theory fame), Bill Nye (the Science Guy), and Mythbusters Jaime and Adam, a series of short videos were made to offer possible theories as to how Superman managed to remove his Kryptonian superbeard.

Kevin Smith’s answer was that Superman shaved using metal from the ship baby Clark Kent rode to Earth in. After all, the metal had to be tough enough to survive the journey here. We took a few minutes of his time for a follow up questions and, in true Kevin Smith fashion, we drifted off to other subjects.

Russell Holly: In the original answer to this question, way back when, Superman could use his heat vision to remove the facial hair. You didn’t buy that, and even Clark Kent mentions that the heat vision took longer and longer over time to shave. Based on your answer to this problem, what happens when he runs out of baby spaceship parts to shave with?

Kevin Smith: That’s an excellent point. If you think about how vast that craft is depicted, and you think about how many razors you have gone through in the course of your life… what we really need is one of these “we supply razors to dudes” companies and find out what the average is for a man over the course of one year in terms of how many blades they go through. Take that and average it over one lifetime, because who knows how ageless Superman is, so measure it out over one Earth lifetime. Say 80 years, and then do an extrapolation of how many razors that would be, and then kinda stretch it across and see what you get in terms of metallic square footage. Then we could figure out if he ran out of rocket ship material.

Russell: Do you want to talk about Man of Steel itself?

Kevin: Fuck yeah, I can’t wait man. They haven’t let me see any more of it than anybody else or anything like that, but here in town there are folks who have seen it. All I keep hearing from those people, when an Agent says “people really seem to like this movie” that’s the highest praise you’ll ever get in Los Angeles. Most of the time people are like “everyone fucking hates it, dude” but with this one people can’t hide it. They may have cracked the Superman code again, man. I’m looking forward to it. The trailers make me cry, as much as I can put together about the story I’m there for.

The detective work I’ve been able to due just from the trailers and the kids book that come out early about Krypton, I was trying to figure out how much of J.J. Abrams stuff they kept, because in his version the planet was still around. Now they’ve got Zod in a spaceship so it makes you kind of go “wait a sec, is Krypton still alive or what?” because you don’t know enough. We’ll know everything in a couple of weeks but right now that kind of information is missing. The other thing is there’s no Clark Kent with the glasses. I’m betting that by the end of the movie is when he gets his job at the Daily Planet.

I like the aspect of Lois chasing him down, trying to find this mystery savior guy. I don’t know how they are going to play the Clark Kent/Superman of it all in this day and age, especially with Lois being an investigative journalist instead of just a columnist or the reporter on the scene that she was in previous incarnations.

The moment I look forward to most, more than making my own movie right now, is this little snippet that first showed up in TV spots two weeks ago. Superman is carrying Lois Lane, and it’s the performance on Amy Adams’ face more than anything, where she’s in his arms and she’s looking back behind camera. Something horrible, the worst thing imaginable is happening what looks like mere feet away. The expression that plays on her face is everything you’ve ever thought about as a comic book reader.

When some superhero swoops in to save the day, in every comic book I have ever read, that moment is translated on her face. Right then I was like “fuck you take all of my money!” so I really want to see Superman do well.